1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a ski binding, preferably for affixing the front of a cross-country shoe to a ski. More particularly, the apparatus of the present invention includes, for a frontwardly mounted transverse hinge pin of a ski shoe, a housing which is upwardly open for receiving the hinge pin, and a bearing insert therefor. Further, the present invention concerns a binding apparatus which includes an upwardly open housing, or bearing, upwardly open for the hinge pin of the shoe, and a moveable plate or bar, intended for the closure of the housing, and the clamping of the hinge pin, while allowing rotation of the shoe around the axis of the hinge pin.
2. Description of Background and Other Information
The constraints of lightness, essential in the field of cross-country skiing, as well as ease of construction, reduction in the number of pieces, and cost lead to an apparatus in which the housing for the hinge pin of the shoe for a binding of the above-described type is in a fixed part of the apparatus which includes the seat, which is generally made of a synthetic molded material.
Such an embodiment formed from synthetic material is, in principal, normally sufficient for cross-country skiing, the stress produced being of relatively little importance.
However, due to the occurrence of wear, particularly due to the difference in hardness between the materials and of the relatively small diameter of the hinge pin, which leads to an increased pressure in the base portion of the hinge pin in its bearing, wear is even more accentuated by the fact that the housing of the pin is generally made of two bearings found at each of the ends of the pin.
An additional wear of about the same magnitude occurs due to the presence of particles, such as sand or other foreign matter, being lodged between the pin and its bearing, which can have a strong abrasive effect.